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Fernando BrandaoBoston, Massachusetts

Flutist, composer, author and educator Fernando Brandão is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He leads the Fernando Brandão
Ensemble, which has recently been featured at the First Cambridge Jazz Festival and the Isabella Gardner Museum. Mr. Brandão is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music and a faculty member of the Community Music Center of Boston....more

Don’t make war, no
give me your hand
Tell me your story, I want to listen to you

I will tell you later of all I’ve seen
of the street treasures,
of dances and candles
I have known

But now, tell me what is troubling you
What I can offer is an invitation

Hug your rage, echo your screams
From your startlings, rip out the rhythm
Face the fear, and invite it to dance

From your sorrows, make poetry
From sighs and cries, melody
Write the chords of your distress,
Turning around the moment
with love and harmony

And, if sadness comes to torment you,
Sing your story without softening it
‘Cause truth is the pain of conciliation
And there's more to life,
And there's more to life, and it won't let you wait
Give me your hand, come to the circle to samba

Breathe in the silence
Listen to its vibration
Your feelings singing in the air

And there we went on.
Moving through the area around the Odeon movie theatre.
There, where an old man
asked for water in a bar
and the crowd went silent
with secrets.
There, where lust poured out
through the tables of the hotel for singles, and Lapa began
to seethe in utopias.
We kept on going.

Through the genesis of small universes
that opened up in details.
Step by step, through dawn
that offered us a bitter taste,
and it was good, and it grew.

There, where imperfections
near the odors of sidewalks
formed an opera of amazement,
a drama of disgrace
and the beauty of guts.

We moved on, between sounds and glitter,
through the lights of the stalls
and the crowded bars.
We stumbled on the curbs,
laughing at problems,
as if escaping the dungeons.

And we would get drunk like
two exhausted barbarians,
rubbing glasses,
plotting lies,
weaving dreams,
spitting fire,
outside the venom,
inside the scream,
in the coronation of
our anarchy.